From our founder

Trip Adler, Founder & CEO

We launched as a simple way to publish any kind of written content on the web. Now, Scribd is keeping reading alive in the 21st century.

A brief history of Scribd

March 2007

Scribd launches the world’s first open publishing platform, allowing anyone to quickly and easily share ideas with the world.

Oct 2013

Scribd introduces the first reading subscription service, providing readers with monthly access to books — all for one flat fee.

Nov 2014

Scribd incorporates audiobooks into its reading subscription service and becomes the most robust and valuable subscription service for readers.

Dec 2015

Sheet music becomes a part of Scribd’s subscription, giving users unprecedented digital access to compositions from the world’s top composers.

Nov 2016

Scribd adds magazines from leading publishers to its subscription.

May 2017

Scribd brings articles from trusted sources like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and more to its subscription.

A few of our publishing partners

Other fun facts

Transcript of From Our Founder

Trip (Co-Founder and CEO): Scribd’s vision is to change that the way the world reads. We launched Scribd as a simple way to publish any kind of written content on the web. The initial idea was inspired by my dad having a medical paper. He’s a doctor and he had a medical paper he wanted to publish, so we decided to build Scribd to help him publish his paper mor easily; because it used to take eighteen months to publish a medical paper. We started with user-contributed content and then we partnered with all the big publishers to add e-Books, and then we added audiobooks, and then we added magazines, newspapers. We even have sheet music in service. One thing I’m proud of is we’re really providing a great, new business model and distribution model for publishers and authors. Reading has been one of the most important forms of communication for thousands of years, really. It’s a really important way that people communicate deep, important thoughts and the way people learn and use their minds. In this current social media era, everyone is looking at really short-form content, and video and snaps and all that, and I think it’s more important than ever that reading stays alive. Hopefully, Scribd is keeping reading alive in the twenty-first century.